Well, Iceland doesn't have a domestic speedskating competition in either
branch of the sport, but they do have an ice hockey competition, so that
would suggest some hockey rinks. Although according to the information I
could find, they only have two...

One belongs to the Vetraríþróttarmiðstöð Íslands and is in Akureyri, where
Skautafélag Akureyrar plays their home matches. Note that "Skautafélag"
looks like "Skating club" but means "Hockey club"... Their web adress is
www.vmi.is, where you can also see a picture of a figure skater in action
(choose "Hlutverk").

The other one is in Reykjavík's activity area of Laugardalur and is used by
Skautafélag Reykjavíkur. I didn't see a picture of that but I assume that if
they're in the telephone book, they exist. Try www.skautafelag.is as a web
address. Their adress in the actual realm is:

> On June 17, 1944, the Republic of Iceland declared its independence from
> those pesky Danes with their speech disorders and their ever-green hilly
> landscape. This means that today is Iceland's 59th "birthday" and as I
> promised earlier, all will be revealed today.
>
> At the page with Icelandic rink records at www.skatebase.com, the
> introductory text used to read, "Despite the name, very little skating is
> done here." Although in 2003, this statement unfortunately seems to be
> rather correct, there were times when the Icelanders did skate quite a
lot.
>
> In November 2002, listmember slash radio maker Marnix Koolhaas had
business
> in Northern Iceland, trying to find out more about chess-playing on the
> island of Grímsey, and he ended up in Akureyri. Akureyri was the only
place
> on Iceland with a skating rink, according to www.skatebase.com. And
because
> chess and skating are so very similar (*) Marnix tried to find out more
> about this skating in Akureyri. Already some 2000 years ago, it was known
> that "seek and ye shall find" - Marnix sought and found.
>
> Over the past months, I have translated and edited Marnix' Icelandic
> sources, and together with Jeroen Heijmans, we've built a website
dedicated
> to the history of Icelandic speedskating and found some more additional
> information. Fortunately, Icelanders -- especially those in Southern
> Iceland, it seems -- are very helpful and most of them answer their
> e-mails... On this joyful day (Iceland turns 59, remember?) we can proudly
> present you with our site, called "En á ísi skríða...".
>
> http://home.tiscali.nl/knmg2168/isl/
>
> On this site are currently:
> - all known results from Icelandic 400m rink speedskating races
> - an historical overview until 1949
> - a bulkload of statistical overviews
> - skater pages à la Jeroen Heijmans' site (about half of them are
presented
> with a picture, and a handful even have a biography)
>
> To be added later are:
> - hopefully more results from Icelandic 400m rink speedskating races
> - results from Icelandic non-400m rink speedskating races
> - results from Icelanders skating abroad (i.e., in Norway)
> - more pictures and biographies
> - an historical overview from 1949 till the present
>
> So, enjoy the site and click your way through Icelandic speedskating
> history. (And -- a long shot -- if you have more information for us,
please
> do tell...)
>
> Also on behalf of Marnix and Jeroen,
>
> Remco
>
> (*) "Chess" in Dutch is "schaken", "skating" is "schaatsen". The
transition
> from k to ts (or similar sounds) is quite common in linguistics, and is
> known as palatalization, cf. pairs like "kaas" (Ned) - "tsiis" (Fri) or
> "ikke" - "ikkje" (Nor). The a to aa transformation is purely a spelling
> thing. But I digress.

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